


Drive

by SilverMoon53



Series: Silver's Summer '18 Fic-a-thon [1]
Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Missing Scene, Non-Linear Narrative, angst? angst, idk why I just feel like water really suits Lauren's character, lots of water imagery, takes place in the first episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 18:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMoon53/pseuds/SilverMoon53
Summary: Lauren drives Andy home after the dance.





	Drive

_Lauren had known, ever since that day at the park with the skateboard, that Andy was a mutant too. He didn’t seem to know, though. His crude attitude towards mutants had remained unchanged, the hints of contempt in his voice when he spoke about them as painfully present as always. That was okay with Lauren. It stung, sure, hearing her brother talk about her, talk about himself, like that, but it was far from the worst they might have to face._

_The thing that bothered her was not knowing if or when his powers would manifest, or what they would be. Some part of her felt that she would just_ know _when it happened._

_Which is why, when the school started shaking, she ran against the panicked tsunami of people._

It was not a long drive from the school back to their house. 20 minutes with minimal traffic, too far to walk but close enough that Lauren was able to push for a later curfew. 

She drives slowly now, cautiously. Comes to a complete stop at every stop sign, obeys every speed limit. Nothing to draw attention to the car beyond the fact that the hour is late. She takes back roads, does her best to stay out of sight without looking suspicious. Neither one of them has said anything since Lauren had started the car, 10 minutes ago now. 

Andy sits, pale and still shaking slightly. Lauren keeps her breathing steady, trying her best to be a grounding presence for her brother. _He’s probably in shock,_ some distant part of her mind tells her. _I probably am, too,_ it adds. Her mind drags up the night her own powers manifested, her own panic and fear, but she shuts it down. Andy needs her. She couldn’t lose herself in her own issues until Andy is okay. 

Lauren glances over, stealing a look at her brother. There are tear tracks running down his face, and his hair has started to dry in clumps. A wave of anger threatens to overwhelm her, but she pushes it back like the moon pushes the tides. What the bullies had done has been done. There is no undoing it and her anger would only make things worse. 

_She pushed people out of her way, desperate to reach Andy before things got worse. She could feel her heart pounding - in her head, in her chest, in her eyes and her fingertips - but felt clear-headed. She threw caution to the winds and shields in the air, saving anyone she could from falling debris._

_Lauren reached the bathroom and tossed a shield up above her own head at the last second. Several of the boys rushed out. They glared at each other for a moment, then Lauren had pushed past them too, pieces of ceiling falling behind her as she dropped her hands._

_She found Andy there, in the centre of it all. There was no eye to this storm, no calm middle ground. He was screaming, holding himself, seemingly oblivious to the destruction around him._

_She screamed his name._

Instead, she removes one white-knuckled grip from the steering wheel and rests it near Andy’s leg. Not touching, not wanting to startle him, but close enough that he can - hopefully - sense her there. They stop at a yellow light and Lauren turns to face her brother. He stares straight ahead, but the far-off look in his eyes make Lauren doubt he’s seeing anything.

“Hey,” she says softly. Andy starts and turns his now wild eyes to her at the sound. He takes a moment, seeming to process that she was the one who had spoken, then relaxes slightly. The scared rabbit look doesn’t leave his eyes, but Lauren hadn’t expected it to. “It’ll be okay.”

Andy scoffs, a sliver of his usual abrasive self so familiar that Lauren isn’t even bothered by it. Part of her knows it’s just a show, that these walls he’s rebuilding will come crumbling down at any second, but for now she clings to the familiarity like a lifeline. She remembers how hard it was to find any sense of normality after she first found her own abilities. 

“It _will_ ,” she insists, firm yet gentle. The light changes to green just as Andy turns on her.

“How do you know that? What do _you_ know about being a mutant?” he snaps, his tone so accusatory and frantic that Lauren almost flinches. She holds steady though, telling herself that she needs to be someone solid for her brother to hold on to until they can get back to their parents. 

The car rumbles and the panicked look in Andy’s eyes returns full force. Lauren steps on the gas, just a little, half-buried memories of her parents taking Andy on drives to get him to sleep. He calms down, or maybe the rumbling was just the car starting to move again, but either way Andy looks less afraid and that’s all that matters. 

It’s then that Lauren fully processes what Andy had said. He hadn’t seen Lauren use her own powers to get them out, or else simply had been dealing with too much else to understand or remember it. 

_Andy was sputtering, apologies and questions spilling from his mouth like a waterfall as Lauren tugged him out the door. She spoke back to him, though she wasn’t sure what it was she said. Assurances, probably, urging him to keep moving._

_One hand was wrapped around his like a vice. She had to keep him moving, had to get him away. The other hand was held in front of her. The air was thick with dust, harder to control, harder still with only one hand. She pushed it anyway, commanding it bend to her will._

_It did._

_The shaking had stopped, but loose debris still fell and there was no clear path out. Lauren solidified the air, using it to push past what she could and climb over what she couldn’t. The whole time, Andy kept babbling, an endless stream of meaningless sounds that only stopped when Lauren bundled him into the car and peeled out of the parking lot fast enough to burn rubber, pushing people and cars out of the way._

Lauren bites her tongue, the dull pain nothing compared to the sharp sting of her brother’s accusation. Her harsh reply - _enough to keep it hidden for three years, so a hell of a lot more than you_ \- dies before it even reaches her held tongue. There is a dike inside her, built up to hold back the ocean of emotions, and she can not let it break. 

Instead, she takes a deep and measured breath. She keeps her eyes on the road in front of her, waits for Andy to calm down. He does so far too quickly, muttering an apology that is so soft, so far from his usual coarse self, that Lauren almost feels herself crack. Not completely, not yet, just the first warning that the ice you’re standing on is too thin. 

The shaking stops, and Lauren keeps her deathgrip on the steering wheel to keep her hands still. 

“Okay,” she concedes, “maybe everything won’t be okay. I hope it will, but you’re right. That’s not something I can promise. But I can promise that you’re not alone. I’m not going to abandon you. No matter what happens, you’re my brother.” She had pulled into their driveway on autopilot while talking. Car parked and engine off, Lauren unbuckles her seatbelt and turns to face her brother properly. “You’re not alone.”

Andy holds her gaze for a moment then looks down. He mutters something that sounds like “thank you” and unbuckles his own seatbelt but makes no move to leave the car. Lauren lets him sit for a moment, the reaches over to grab his hand.

“Come on, let’s go talk to mom. She’ll know what to do.” 

“What if she kicks me out?!” Andy all but shouts, the words bubbling up and out so fast that he looks surprised he said them. 

“She won’t.”

“But what if she does?”

Lauren sighs. She can’t say that she hadn’t had these thoughts herself. There is a reason her parents still didn’t know that she, herself, is a mutant. But Andy has something she didn’t. 

An ally.

“Then we’ll figure something out. The two of us.” He looks at her, scared and hopeful, and she’s reminded of just how young he is and how horrific tonight’s events had been. “You don’t have to deal with this alone.” She smiles at him, hoping he can’t tell how strained it is. “Now let’s go. Sitting here isn’t going to help.”

Together, they climbed out of the car and went inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Writeblr blog: @silverssideblog requests are open!!


End file.
